Tag Archives: vacancies

TeachVac launches new service for schools

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The DfE Vacancy site for teachers is still a muddled mess. Eight years ago, well before the DfE woke up to the idea that the internet could be used for low cost but effective job matching, I helped create TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk and made it a free service for schools and teachers.

The basic rationale was simple – modern technology can cut the cost of finding a job and schools could save money as a result. After the Public Accounts Committee complained that the DfE didn’t have a grip on the labour market for teachers, the DfE set about creating a job board of their own.

At the start of the pandemic, I offered to share vacancies that the DfE didn’t upload with them to help to create a single free platform for teachers. Go away, I was told.

So, TeachVac still offers a free service, but is now launching its premium service whereby a school can ensure its vacancies are at the top of the list of matches a teacher receives each day. The service also provides a reminder after a few days so that teachers see the job more than once. Schools also receive labour market updates each month. All this for £500 per year for secondary schools and even less for primary schools across both state and private sectors schools.

Contact enquiries@oxteachserv.com for more information or to sign up and receive an early bird discount.

But, back the DfE site. Where, of course, teachers can only search for jobs in state schools. So, the site isn’t useful to those that don’t mind whether they work in state or private schools.

The front page of the DfE site is a real muddle. There are lists of ‘towns/cities and ‘counties’ although Chester West and Chester East aren’t counties, but unitary authorities. Towns within shire counties such as Oxford, Exeter, Chelmsford and many others don’t have a listing on the front page.  London has a single listing, not even split into the different pay area: not helpful if there are lots of vacancies in the Capital’s schools.

Milton Keynes receives a mention, but the rest of Buckinghamshire doesn’t. Still, there is a search buttons for key words and locations. A search on ‘secondary’ and ‘Oxford’ brings up 12 results. Four are non-teaching posts; two are in special schools or PRUs and only six are in secondary schools.

There is an alert function, but if it sends non-teaching posts as well as teaching vacancies it doesn’t do the job for which it is intended, unless the civil servants at the DfE think teachers that cannot find a teaching post will consider non-teaching roles and have the appropriate qualifications for such positions.

TeachVac is breaking records each month with 500,000+ matches so far in 2022, and over one million in this school year to date.

The earlier a school signs up for the premium service, the higher up the daily list of matches it will be placed. Don’t delay: sign up today by emailing enquiries@oxteachserv.com to express interest.

Are schools wasting £30 million pounds of public money?

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TES Global, the largest supplier of paid-for teacher recruitment advertising in the field of education has just published their accounts for the year ending 31st August 2020. Those so far published are for TES Global Limited. Those for TES topco are yet to appear. The published accounts can be found on the Companies House page, by searching under TES Global.

The accounts for the year to 31st August 2020 included almost six months of the pandemic, so it is not surprising that turnover from continuing operations fell by around £2 million to £59.2 million. Thanks to interest receivable and other income of £25.3 million, the Group made an overall profit of £22.3 million. Without that income there would have been a loss of around £3 million; this despite cutting the wages and salary bill from just under £14 million to around £9.5 million, and slashing headcount from 235 to 191.

The sale of the TES owned Teacher Supply Business in December 2020, for a total consideration of £27 million including upfront cash of £12.5 million, will no doubt further help to strengthen the balance sheet. However, the income from those businesses were, presumably, included in these accounts.

Of interest to me, as Chair of TeachVac, and no doubt civil servants at the DfE running the DfE teacher vacancy site, was how the TES was doing serving the teacher recruitment market, and how much cash was it securing from state-funded schools for recruitment advertising, all of which is now on-line, like both TeachVac and the DfE sites.

As the TES has been pursuing a policy of persuading schools to pay an annual subscription for several years now, rather than point of sale advertising, the TES Group income has been less affected by the downturn in vacancies during the pandemic than it would have been if each advert had been paid for individually. A quick calculation from the published accounts suggests that while overall revenue fell by 4%, advertising revenue continued to benefit from the switch to subscriptions. Such income rose from £37.6 million the previous year to £42.4 million in 2019-2020. Traditional advertising income fell from £17.7 million to £10.9 million during the same period.

The TES has some 1,000 international schools and presumably schools elsewhere in the United Kingdom, as well as non- state-funded schools that contributed to the £42.4 million of revenue. A generous estimate might suggest perhaps £35 million was paid by state-funded schools in England in subscription income in 2019-2020 to the TES.

It is interesting to compare this with the DfE evidence to the STRB earlier this year, where at paragraph 45 they stated that:

With schools spending in the region of £75m on recruitment advertising and not always filling vacancies, there are very significant gains to be made in this area. Over 75% of schools in England 14 are now signed up to use the service and over half a million jobseekers visited Teaching Vacancies in 2020. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/967761/STRB_Written_Evidence_2021.pdf

According to the latest DfE announcement, some 78% of schools have now signed up to the service https://www.publicsectorexecutive.com/articles/councils-encouraged-sign-dfes-free-teaching-vacancies-service?utm_source=Public%20Sector%20Executive&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=12340062_Newsletter%2027%20Apr&dm_i=IJU,7CHNI,AUR327,TT9F6,1

I wonder where the other £30 million of so is going – surely not to the local press or eteach and The Guardian?

Either way, that is still a lot of cash schools are spending because they don’t have enough confidence in either TeachVac or the DfE sites to allow them to take the risk of not signing up to the TES. Or is it just inertia?

If the government is serious about helping schools save this money spent on recruitment advertising for other purposes, and the cash will surely be needed in the post-pandemic world, however speedy the recovery, given the amount of public cash spent in the past twelve months. There must be a campaign to encourage teachers to use the free sites, and for schools to always ask where applicants either received notice of the vacancy or saw the vacancy that they applied for. This will allow schools to evaluate the effect of paid-for advertising and the TES subscription compared with the use of the free sites instead.

Interestingly, TeachVac reached a new high of 6,000,000 hits in twelve months at the end of April. This was despite the fall in vacancies on the site during the past twelve months as schools cut the number of teaching post advertised.

May 2021 should be the first 1,000,000 hit month for TeachVac, with corresponding highs in visitors and vacancies matched as schools return to a more normal recruitment pattern, as explained in a previous post on this blog.

Covid and the Teacher Labour Market in England

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We now have data from twelve months that have suffered from the effects of the covd-19 pandemic. First thing this morning, I asked my analysts at TeachVac what had been the consequences for the teacher labour market in England. They came up with the following table for all vacancies.

2018201920202021
March715990299302
April813187356080
May10170114686357
June386248283286
July93312941043
August547565543
September295538843382
October418654383721
November366242583074
December201528931811
January5492638682162622
February5056579184215167
Monthly recorded vacancies for teachers in England

Source: TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk

Secondary teachers have suffered from a greater decline in their job opportunities than their primary colleagues. However, with the modern equivalent of ‘pool’ recruitment still in operation in parts of the primary sector, the figures are less reliable for that sector the for the secondary school sector where most schools manage their own recruitment.

Details data for local authority vacancy patterns and even those for a specific postcode are available on request, for a small fee. Data are also available for specific secondary subjects on a month by month basis, again for a small fee.

The next two months will be key ones for teachers looking for jobs. Will the market return to 2019 levels or continue to remain depressed. Much may depend upon the behaviour of the wider labour market for graduates. However, how many teachers decide to leave their jobs will also be important. It is also worth remembering that he supply of teachers leaving teacher preparation courses will not be sufficient in all subjects to meet the DfE’s estimate of need. How far ‘returners’ can make up the deficit only time will tell, but fewer advertised vacancies will also help close the gap.

I, for one, had wondered whether the pandemic and resulting effects on head teacher’s workload, might have resulted in a wave of departures. So far, in 2021, there is little evidence of any surge in departures of primary head teachers.

Although there have been fewer vacancies in London during the past twelve months, the Home Counties, and especially those parts of the Home Counties in the South East remain the part of the country driving the teacher labour market. This is not surprising as this are also contains the largest concentration of private schools. So far, these schools do not seem, as a sector, to have been badly affected by the pandemic in terms of pupil numbers. No doubt September enrolment will conform whether that is still the case.

Finally, although pupil numbers are still increasing in the secondary sector, will there be any effect from Brexit? Might some EU families return to their home country rather than stay in England? If so, could such departures have an effect on school rolls in some areas where there are large concentrations of EU citizen living in particular neighbourhoods? Comments on this point would be welcome.

Will you find a teaching post in 2021?

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How easy will trainees find job hunting in 2021? The following predictions are based upon an analysis of vacancies for teaching posts recorded by TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk over the past four years. The raw vacancy data is then linked to the ITT census of trainee numbers produced by the DfE and based upon returns from providers.

As noted in another post on this blog, there are fewer trainees on classroom-based courses than a few years ago. This pushes up demand for trainees and returners to fill posts these trainees would have occupied. Assuming similar completion rates for trainees as in the past, and that with rising rolls in the secondary sector, if total vacancies are no worse than in 2020, and hopefully closer to the 2019 total it is possible to estimate the shape of the labour market in different subjects during 2021. However, much will depend upon how many teachers retire or leave the classroom for other jobs. If teacher stay put in larger numbers than usual, vacancies will be lower than in the past.

So, before I list some my predictions it is worth reminding those looking for teaching posts to register with the platform that provides the best opportunity for them to be pointed towards possible vacancies. I am, of course biased in favour of TeachVac, but there is the DfE site that also contains non-teaching posts, and the TES, as well as local authority job boards. Candidates might want to register with agencies and let them take the strain, but it is worth asking about their success in the geographical area where you are likely to be looking for a job.

So what might the picture for 2021 look like? Physics, design and technology and business studies teachers should still have little problem find a teaching post either during 2021 or for January 2022.

On the other hand, history and PE teachers will continue to find that there are more candidates than there are vacancies across much of England. The ability to offer a second subject might be worth thinking about in any application.  Teachers of geography will also likely to find job hunting challenging later in the year.

This year, teachers of art may struggle to find teaching posts, especially as the year progresses, as there are considerably more trainees than in recent years. Teachers of RE and biology may also face similar challenges in job hunting as 2021 progresses towards the start of the new school term in September.

The outlook for teachers of sciences, other than physics, is likely to be similar to the situation in 2020, with teachers of biology unable to offer other sciences at most risk of finding a teaching post challenging as the progresses.

Mathematics and IT/Computing teachers should find plenty of choice of jobs early in the year, but possibly not as much choice as in recent years.

It is difficult to predict the market for teachers of languages other than English in Britain’s new post-EU membership world. At present, it looks as if across England there is a good balance between supply and demand, but there may be regional shortages if vacancy levels increase. On the other hand, if vacancies decline, there could be a surplus of teachers of some languages, notably Spanish.

Teachers of music are likely to find enough vacancies for trainees unless there is an inflow of ‘returners’ from outside of the profession as a result of changes in the wider labour market for those with music qualifications and a teaching background.

Each month TeachVac updates information about overall vacancies in the monthly newsletter. Details can be found at: https://www.teachvac.co.uk/our_services.php

Sluggish start for teaching vacancies in 2021

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January 2020 was a bumper month for teacher vacancies. Trainees, returning teachers and those looking for promotion were spoilt for choice across most of England, as secondary schools started recruiting early for September 2020. Fast forward a year, and with different priorities on the minds of school leadership teams, the slump in vacancies that started when the pandemic struck last spring has continued into the first part of January 2021.

TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk the vacancy site for teachers, where I am Chair, has recorded a 50% reduction in vacancies during the first 15 days of January 2021 compared with the same period in January 2020. In some secondary subjects, such as English and history, the slump has been even larger in percentage terms; vacancies are more than 60% down on last year.

Over England as a whole, there 1,300 fewer vacancies recorded by TeachVac during the first 15 days of January this year than during the same period last year. Looking back beyond the record rate of 2020, the January 2021 number is also below the number of vacancies recorded by TeachVac in both January 2018 and 2019.

Will these jobs return? The answer is that some will, but some won’t. The suggestion in the press that London has lost 700,000 of its population over the past twelve months, as foreign workers have returned home,  may help to explain why vacancies in the capital for teachers have been especially hard hit over the past twelve months. At present, the Midlands, both East and West, are also regions where there has been an appreciable fall-off in vacancies compared with last year.

In a recession, public sector workers with a secure job tend to stay put, so fewer teachers leaving either to take the chance on a new career or to teach overseas. This lack of movement has the effect of reducing demand for replacements. School budgets are under pressure as a result of the pandemic, so that is another factor that will delay recruitment activities, although TeachVac and the DfE site don’t cost schools cash. The DfE site does cost time and effort not required of schools by TeachVac.

As has been said in the past, there is no point in spending cash on recruitment until you have tried the free option and it hasn’t worked. TeachVac has matched 120,000 vacancies over the past two years and even if half resulted in an appointment that could have saved school millions of pounds in recruitment advertising.

TeachVac is currently preparing its reviews of 2020, and that on the Leadership Labour Market should be published next week: watch this blog for details. The wider review of classroom vacancies will appear later in the month. Both would have been faster had the government’s KickStart Scheme worked. On the Isle of Wight we still haven’t been offered any candidates through the Scheme, despite signing up almost on day one of the scheme’s announcement.

In summary, this may well be another year where the labour market favour employers over job-seekers, so registering with job sites such as TeachVac sooner rather than later may make sense for those seeking a teaching or school leadership post.

Regional differences in teacher vacancy levels

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By the end of 2019, schools in England will have advertised around 60,000 vacancies for teachers. After removing repeat adverts and re-advertisements, as well as schools now placing rolling adverts on their web sites to attract potential candidates, there will have been somewhere in excess of 50,000 vacancies that schools across England have sought to fill this year. The data comes for TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk, the largest free site for both schools and teachers in England.

However, anyone seeking a classroom teacher post this year will have discovered that there are important differences between the different regions of England in terms of how easy it has been to find a teaching post.

Percentage of total vacancies for teachers January-October 2019

Region % of Vacancies % of Schools
London 21 16 More Vacancies
South East 21 17 More Vacancies
East England 13 12 More Vacancies
North West 9 12 Less Vacancies
South West 9 10 Less Vacancies
West Midlands 9 11 Less Vacancies
East Midlands 8 8 Same
Yorkshire & Humber 7 9 Less Vacancies
North East 3 4 Less Vacancies

Less Vacancies

Source: TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk (From November onwards vacancies for September 2020 start appearing, as well as a few last minute vacancies for January 2020 as a result of unforeseen events)

There is a clear difference in demand for teachers between London and the Home Counties and the rest of England. London, in particular, has five per cent more of the share of vacancies than its share of schools across England. This is despite London having an above average number of private schools compared with some other parts of England.

How much of the difference in vacancy levels is down to challenges in filling posts leading to higher re-advertisement levels is difficult to quantify without each vacancy having a unique reference number: something this blog has long advocated, and the DfE might want to consider now it has had a year of managing its own vacancy site. Incidentally, the DfE site still only contains a fraction of the number of vacancies found each day on TeachVac. Why the teacher associations haven’t protested at this waste of government money is something I haven’t been able to fathom.

The numbers in the table also suggest that the government’s policy of rewarding excellence in teacher preparation might be sound in one respect, but isn’t delivering the teachers where they are needed by the schools.

The government might need to rethink a policy that doesn’t provide enough teachers for the fastest growing parts of England. If a London Allowance is available for teachers, why is it not available for trainees? Do new graduates joining the civil service or the police suffer the same fate as trainee teachers in London? Even with bursary payments, rates are set at a national level and there is also the need for most to pay tuition fees while in training as a teacher.

 

Recruiting Teachers – the cost effective option

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I am delighted to announce that TeachVac will be adding the small number of vacancies from the DfE site that TeachVac doesn’t already carry to the TeachVac site. These vacancies are mostly either in new schools recruiting for the first time or primary schools in small MATs with a central recruitment page.

As TeachVac also includes vacancies from independent schools, this will make it the most comprehensive site for anyone interested in either applying for a teaching vacancy or interested in what is happening in the labour market for teachers.

As a result, I have written the following piece as an overview of recruitment in what remains a challenging labour market for teachers. You can sign up to Teachvac at http://www.teachvac.co.uk; it free and easy to do.

There are a number of different options for schools and academy trusts seeking to recruit teachers and school leaders. Put briefly, these are:

  • Free sites such as the DfE site and TeachVac (national coverage) and local authority job boards (local and in some cases regional coverage)
  • Traditional national paid for advertising sites such as The TES, eteach and The Guardian.
  • Local paid for advertising via local newspapers and their websites.
  • Recruitment Agencies of various types, including agencies focused on the supply teacher market.
  • Direct marketing to universities and other providers of teacher preparation courses as well as offering vacancies to teachers in schools during preparation courses.
  • School web sites, including the use of talent banking.

Each of these comes with different costs and benefits.

A single point of contact for free advertising of vacancies for teachers and school leaders has been identified by the National Audit Office; the Education Select Committee and in the 2017 Conservative Party election manifesto as the best way forward.

During 2018 and early 2019 the DfE developed and implemented such a product to operate alongside the already existing TeachVac site designed and operated by a company where Professor John Howson, a long-time authority on the labour market for teachers is the chair of the board.

The advantage of the DfE site is that it has the backing of the government. Potential disadvantages include the fact that it requires schools to upload vacancies and that it only handles vacancies from state funded schools and colleges. A minor distraction is that the site also handles non-teaching vacancies mixed in with the teaching posts. Requiring schools to upload vacancies can be both time consuming and also requires training for new staff to ensure that they can operate the system. The information is limited to that required by the site and isn’t easy to alter without informing all schools of the change.

TeachVac uses technology to collect vacancies every day from school websites and then eyeballing to verify their accuracy. The amount of information collected is greater than on the DfE web site.  A potential disadvantage of TeachVac is that it does not allow users to browse vacancies, but requires specification of a set of requirements for the vacancy sought. This approach has the advantage of also collecting data about the level of interest in specific types of vacancies in specific parts of the country. TeachVac covers both state funded and private schools so provides a one-stop shop for teachers seeking vacancies.

Both sites have the advantage of being free to use for both schools and teachers. The DfE site is subject to the need for government funding and TeachVac must fund itself.

All other approaches, save for schools own web sites and direct marketing by schools to teacher preparation courses, are subject to the profit motive and thus have a cost to schools.

The use of modern technology allows for the combination of approaches by schools, starting with the free options and allowing for the best paid-for alternative should the free option not provide an adequate response to a generated vacancy within a short period of time.

Do let me have your thoughts on how you see the future for the market? Will free sites reduce the ability of paid-for sites to attract vacancies? Will the DfE site become the default site or does it lack of breadth mean teachers will want a site offering all teaching vacancies in one place? Will recruitment agencies become the normal route for entry into the profession for newly qualified teachers and returners? Do the Local government Association and the teacher associations have a role to play in the marketing of vacancies to teachers and monitoring the labour market independent of government?

Let me know what you think?

Teachers always needed in London

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Four out of every ten teaching vacancies in England, advertised between January and the end of July this year, were placed by schools located either in London or the South East. Add in vacancies from the northern and eastern Home Counties, including Essex, Hertfordshire and schools located in a clutch of unitary local authorities and the figure for vacancies comes close to half of all teaching posts. This data come from TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk, the company where I am Chair of the Board.

By contrast, the North East and North West together account for only 12% of vacancies. This increases to 20% if the Yorkshire and The Humber Region is added into the total. Of course, these are smaller regions than London and the South East, but that doesn’t account for all of the difference.

Undoubtedly, the school population is rising faster in London and the Home Counties than elsewhere, both because of the birth rate increase a few years ago and also because of the amount of house building, especially in parts of the South East. Oxfordshire has had three new secondary schools over the past few years, with more to come. This after a period when no new secondary schools were built in the county.

Although Teach First is now a programme spread across England, its influence in London can still be seen. Schools in the Capital generally topped the list for percentage of vacancies recorded by region, but were in second place in terms of the percentage of demand for teachers of English and only in joint first place with the South East in demand for teachers of mathematics, both accounting for 19% of the national total of advertised vacancies.

Another reason demand may be high in London and the South East is the significant number of private schools located in these regions.

Interestingly, ‘business’ in is various forms was the subject where London was further ahead of the rest of the country; accounting for a third of all vacancies advertised so far in 2019. Add in the percentage for the South East and the total for the two regions is more than half the total for the whole of England.

In business, as in a range of other subjects, schools needing to recruit for vacancies that arise for January 2020 are going to find filing those vacancies something of a challenge. Regardless of the outcome of Brexit and the state of the world economy, there won’t be a reserve of newly qualified teachers still looking for work in many subjects. Languages, history and geography within the EBacc being exceptions, although even here there are likely to be local shortages, regardless of the national picture.

Recruiting returners and persuading teachers to switch schools may be the best options for schools suddenly faced with a vacancy, for whatever reason. There will be some teachers coming back from overseas and TeachVac has seen more ‘hits’ on the web site from Southern Hemisphere counties over the past few weeks. But such numbers may only be of marginal help unless there is a really deep global recession.

One option the government might consider is offering teacher preparation courses starting and ending in January as well as September. The Open University used to be very good at offering courses that graduate teachers in time to meet the needs of schools looking to fill their January vacancies.  It might be worth considering such an option again.

TeachVac has more jobs

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I was interested to read in the DfE’s Recruitment Bulletin that ‘Teaching vacancies’, the official job listing service from DfE, now has over 45% of all schools in England signed up to advertise their vacant teaching posts. Of course, signed up schools isn’t the same as the share of advertised vacancies the site has achieved, still totaling at less than half of the level of TeachVac’s vacancy totals.

Compared to TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk , the original free listing service for teaching vacancies, where I am Chair of the Board, the DfE site is still playing catch-up. For instance, the DfE has only now launched a new job alerts function, enabling job-seeking teachers to get up to date notifications of suitable posts in their chosen location. This was something build in to TeachVac from the start.

As the DfE points out, ’Teaching vacancies’ is an official government service and trusted source, so no personal data will be shared or sold on to third parties. The latter has always been true for TeachVac. We match teachers to jobs, but that’s all we do with the data. Indeed, TeachVac doesn’t hold any personal data on teachers except for a username and password.

The most important difference for schools between the two sites is that TeachVac doesn’t require schools to do anything for their vacancies to appear, whereas the DfE requires schools to input vacancies, taking time and effort to do so.

The other problem the DfE faces is building up users of the site. TeachVac has several years start on the DfE, and the paid for sites even longer. Maybe this is why the DfE’s latest ITT Recruitment Bulletin says, ‘Please help to promote the service to your newly qualified teachers’. The message is even blunter in another place ‘Please encourage your trainees to start using this service rather than paid-for alternatives’.

With less than two weeks to the end of the main recruitment round for September, this seems a bit late to be having to ask ITT providers to persuade trainees to use the DfE service. We know that many trainees and teachers already use TeachVac at no cost to the public purse, and they should have no reason to switch to the DfE site.

Earlier in the recruitment round TeachVac offered to supply the DfE with the vacancies they were missing, as TeachVac still has more than twice as many teaching posts added every day compared to the DfE’s site. Until the DfE reaches similar numbers of vacancies to TeachVac, teachers looking for a teaching post will always see a larger range of vacancies on TeachVac than on the DfE’s site.

The recruitment market for teachers is changing and it is interesting to see the DfE trying to nationalise the free recruitment of teaching vacancies using taxpayer’s cash to do so. But, we live in odd political times where former norms don’t always make sense these days

 

Non to EBacc recruitment?

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Schools don’t want EBacc teachers. Apart from mathematics, where recruitment into training was poor for last September (as has already been noted), schools seeking to fill vacancies in the other main Ebacc subjects aren’t having the same issues as they are with recruitment in some non-Ebacc subjects.

Computer Science will be the next Ebacc subject to see a Red Warning posted on TeachVac, www.teachvac.co.uk but it will be a close run thing with Religious Education as to which subject reaches the level of a red warning first.

The Ebacc subjects of history, geography and modern languages are still a long way away from seeing any posting of a red warning, and even English and the Sciences overall still have a distance to go before we reach that level of concern. However, schools looking for specific curriculum experience will always find the pool smaller than the overall total.

As ever, in determining the outcome of this recruitment round, much depends upon the numbers seeking to return to teaching after a career break and the rate of departure from the profession.

The DfE could do far more with ‘Keep in Touch‘ schemes for those leaving and the STRB might want to look at reversing the rule that a salary on departure for a career break isn’t protected. Schools can look at offering other less demanding roles for those on a career break to earn some money once maternity leave has finished, such as invigilating, lesson planning or even help with marking. Some of these tasks can be undertaken at home and can provide extra cash, as might helping with one to one tuition. Helping teachers keep in touch and stay up to date is a certain way of ensuring a greater rate of return to the profession probably earlier than in some other circumstances.

The balance between small sixth form numbers and growing KS3 numbers is also causing headaches for some schools, and no doubt adding to the financial problems some schools are facing. In a more cooperative age, schools might pool timetables in minority subjects. This is another area where competition and devolved budgets make sensible arrangements more of a challenge to organise than when there was a great willingness to make the best use of limited resources. Now the demand is for more resources as the only way forward.

How are schemes to recruit and retain teachers from the EU faring? It might be worth a PQ or two from some MP to ascertain what the DfE think is happening compared with recent recruitment rounds? And how are overseas teachers from what one might call the Gove countries reacting to the need for teachers in England? Are we seeing more Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and US teachers than in recent years flooding to our shores?

This week looks set to be the peak of the 2109 recruitment round with probably 6-7,000 new vacancies posted by schools during the course of the week.